


A Better Man

by FieryPen37



Series: Held Captive [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, King Jon Snow, Pregnant Dany, Slice of Life, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 06:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16592882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FieryPen37/pseuds/FieryPen37
Summary: King Jon shares an audience with Lady Stark.





	A Better Man

**Author's Note:**

> Another vignette set after the end of Held Captive

 

 

Jon despised ruling. While he passionately believed in his wife’s ideals and grand plans for the world, Jon hated the day-to-day tedium of being king. It rested uncomfortably on his shoulders like a too-tight tunic, the bowing and scraping, the poisoned words and sidelong glances. It was a world Daenerys and Tyrion were more suited to than he.

Worse still, these endless meetings and judgements and tours separated him from his now-heavily pregnant wife. Maester Jaron urged her to stay abed as her time neared. Her heart pounded too hard for the maester’s liking, and proscribed her hawthorn tea three times a day to ease it.

Jon cleared his throat, straightening in his chair. After the small council meeting and touring the new naval defenses Asha and her ironborn were building on the Blackwater, then began the petitions. For two hours every day, either Daenerys, himself, or Tyrion would hear the grievances that stymied the judges and septons. Dust motes danced in golden beams of sunlight slanting into the small council chamber. The stiff-backed chair was desperately uncomfortable, and the air was already moist with the onset of spring. Jon mentally consigned himself to sweating until next winter.  

Rakharo stood behind him as Grey Worm struck the butt of his spear on the ground and said: “You stand in the presence of Jon, First of his Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, the White Wolf.”

The repeated litany of his titles sounded pompous to his own ears, but he found most of his subjects relished the feeling of importance meeting with him granted them. A _dothrakaan_ strode into the room, in painted vest and fringed trousers, his whip coiled casually around one arm. The rider was young, his braid a stubby tuft at the nape of his neck.

“ _Khal Ahesh_ ,” he said, with a curt bow.

With Rakharo acting as translator, the rider, Kaerqo, detailed his grievances with his neighboring Reacher lords. This wasn’t the first dispute related to the Dothraki integration in Westerosi territory, so Jon broke off to consult Rakharo and Tyrion’s notes with the particulars. Jon bit back his irritation with a slow breath.

“Kaerqo,” he began, with Rakharo’s deep voice a low counterpoint as he translated, “this was the accord struck between you and the khaleesi when you chose to follow her across the poison water. By conquest and victory, you are given riches and lands. But upon those lands, you cannot reave and rape and pillage.” Kaerqo’s narrow black eyes met his, brimming with challenge.

“This is not our way,” he said, “The Great Stallion gives riders strength to fight.”

Jon felt a headache brewing. The Dothraki were a stubborn people, and what Daenerys asked of them—and himself to a lesser degree—was a complete change of their way of life. Daenerys asked and cajoled and commanded them to set aside each piece of their identity: surrendering their dependence on the dosh khaleen, swearing themselves as their bloodriders, crossing the poison water, accepting a woman as their Stallion Who Mounts the World. All were hard, painful decisions to make, to set aside the old ways for a new one. Many like Kaerqo, young and hungry for glory, resented the change.

“The khaleesi is the Stallion Who Mounts the World. It is by her word that we all must change. Dothraki and Westerosi alike.” This was Rakharo’s own aside, first in Common for Jon’s benefit, then again in Dothraki. Kaerqo’s shoulders twitched, a pugnacious gesture.

“‘ _Change_?’ Mewling pale-faced weaklings,” he said, under his breath. Jon rose to his feet, slow, unhurried. Tucked underneath the table, Ghost rose with Jon. His muscular bulk stood even with Kaerqo’s nose.

“If you were truly a strong man as you claim, you’d speak those words to my face,” Jon said, his hand on Ghost’s back feeling the fine vibration of his growl. Kaerqo was still a green boy, though, taking a half-step back. Jon pinned the boy in place with his gaze, like a butterfly on a board.

“The Dothraki are blood of my wife’s blood, kin to me through her. But, if you disobey our orders, I say to you what she said to the slavers: ‘You can live in our new world, or die in the old one.’” Face set in a scowl, Kaerqo ducked into a perfunctory bow.

“ _Khal Ahesh_ ,” he said, before turning on his heel and stalking out, muttering in Dothraki.

“Boys such as he will not give up so easily,” Rakharo said as the door shut behind him. Jon pinched the bridge of his nose to ease the pain stoking there.

“With no war to fight, they will find some other way to spend their time,” Jon said, pacing the length of the room to stretch his legs.

“I suppose not all men are farmers,” Arya said with some asperity.

Jon regarded his favorite sibling with that strange conglomeration of love tinged with fear. An undercurrent of resentment lingered, like a rock submerged in a river. Trained by the House of Black and White, Arya had slipped into his wife’s rooms and held a knife to her throat. In his nightmares, Daenerys lay limp and cold, those vibrant eyes closed forever, and Arya’s long vulpine face hovering like a ghost.

Jon sipped watered wine from his glass. The cool liquid soothed his throat. For her skill and cunning, Daenerys had rewarded Arya with a place on her Queensguard. The perfect life for his scrappy sister. His eye fell to Needle, thin and gleaming at her hip and some of the tension loosened. She was still Arya, his fair-minded and loyal sister.

“I suppose not,” Jon said with a cough, “how many more are left?”

“Forty-two petitioners wait in the Tower of the Hand, _Dārys_ ,” Grey Worm said, his stone face as miserable as Jon. As fractious as Daenerys’ moods had been as her time neared, she leaned on Missandei’s gentle attentiveness all the more. Grey Worm was surely as overwrought as Jon by the separation. He heaved a sigh, sharing a commiserating glance with Arya.

“Send the next one in.”

The door opened to reveal Lady Stark, Brienne and two Winterfell guards.

“Mother?” Arya said, her ramrod posture straightening. Lady Stark looked equally nonplussed. Jon, for his part, groped for any of the fleeing dregs of his patience. The pounding pain in his head intensified.

“Arya. I thought you were with the queen today,” Lady Stark asked in her modulated voice with the faintest tinge of a Riverlands accent.

“In her words: ‘I can be of better use pacing the rooms with Jon.’ To give him company,” Arya said, a sharp edge to her voice. While Lady Stark shared a close and loving bond with each of her children, there was always a savor of discontent between her and Arya. _The wolf’s blood runs hot._

“I see,” Lady Stark said.

The following silence was stretched taut as a loom string.

“Why do you petition the king, Lady Stark?” Grey Worm asked. Straight to heart of the matter, gods bless him. Lady Stark’s blue Tully eyes darted around the room. Jon felt a faint amusement. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d seen her look uncomfortable.

“May . . . we speak in private, Your Grace?” she asked.

The amusement faded. He was many years away from the sullen boy in her care, he need not suffer her presence if he did not wish to. It rested on his tongue to dismiss her, as she had him so many times. So many small rejections, for love, for tolerance, for praise, for acknowledgment, all gone unanswered, unheeded. Jon closed his eyes briefly to shut out her face. Without his siblings or Daenerys to buffer and mute it, the pain roared to aching life. Even after all this damned time. The answering silence stretched on, breathless.

“Aye. Leave us, please,” Jon said, rising to his feet. Ghost nosed his hand. Jon soothed him with a pat. Their respective attendants filed out, closing the door with a soft thump. Lady Stark plucked at a speck of lint on the sleeve of her deep blue gown. White embroidery danced along the cuffs in fanciful curls. Sansa had inherited her neat embroiderer’s hand. That thought led to the white wolf banner she made for him, hanging in the great hall beside Daenerys’ dragon.

“Will you take refreshment, my lady?” Jon asked, moving to the sideboard and pouring more watered wine for himself. A freshening breeze bearing a hint of the sea’s brine washed through the window. Faintly he heard the bells chime the hour.

“No, thank you, Your Grace,” she said. Jon eyed her sidelong, pale and twitching. A chilling thought occurred to him.

“Robb is well? Sansa?”

“All are well, thanks to you and the queen, Your Grace,” she assured him hurriedly.

Leaning one hip against the sideboard, Jon sipped his wine. When long moments passed in silence, he exhaled a breath through his nose. Gods knew he hadn’t the patience to unravel whatever bound her in knots!

“What can I do for you?” he asked with some asperity. Lady Stark flinched as if he’d prodded her with a poker.

“I—I have a request to ask of you, Your Grace.”

“Name it.”

“I . . .I have come to ask . . . for your forgiveness.”

The words took him aback. A dull purplish jolt of pain, like pressing on a bruise. The dozens of petty cruelties and omissions that colored his childhood had never been acknowledged, much less brought up for redress. He waited, letting the silence draw out like a blade. Lady Stark held his gaze, though there was the slightest tremor in her firmed lips. Jon considered and discarded various ways he may answer, and instead said: “He never told you?” Lady Stark fidgeted, at last glancing away.

“No,” she said. Jon folded his arms over his chest.

“I suppose his lies hurt the both of us.”

“Yes.”

“I cannot give you what you ask. Not yet.” Lady Stark bowed her head.

“I see.”

Silence reigned again, a cooler, calmer one. Jon sipped his wine. He longed for Daenerys; her energy charged the air, her cutting humor could diffuse tension. And tense he was, anger boiling like a stewpot in his belly.  

“Had I not met and loved Daenerys, had I not been found to be Rhaegar’s son. If you still thought I was the child of Lord Stark’s body, would you ask for forgiveness then?” he asked. Lady Stark looked taken aback by the question. A hint of mutiny lingered in her expression. Unused to the bastard talking back, he supposed.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. Jon’s mouth quirked without humor.

“Well, we both must learn our new roles, hmm?” he said.

 


End file.
